In general, my interests in the History of Medicine concern the intersection between health, politics, medical epistemology, and popular culture. These questions are often on my mind:

How do nonclinicans use medicine and medical knowledge in their everyday life?

How does the state use medicine to legitimate its rule?

How and why do physicians enjoy special social status?

How does medicine inspire citizenry to have nationalist feeling?

How and why do people culturally construct illness?

How do groups of ill people organize politically?

In general, I have found that studying the history of mental health, psychology, and psychiatry allows me the chance to get at the heart of these questions. The intersections between modern medicine and warfare also allow insight into how the state uses medicine to its sociopolitical advantage. Finally, examining how public health institutions have been designed offers me an ideal opportunity to see the ways in which political ideology shapes the way we care for the body politic, and thus, individual bodies.